


aurelian in exile

by cirque



Category: Original Work
Genre: Cyborgs, IN SPACE!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:41:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25367767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cirque/pseuds/cirque
Summary: Before, they had been Knights; now, they were refugees.
Relationships: Female Knight Sworn To Protect The King/Widowed Queen Mother Acting As Regent & Child King
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8
Collections: Original Works Opportunity 2020





	aurelian in exile

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nununununu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nununununu/gifts).



King Aurelian Djawadi (eighteenth monarch of the Kefvir dynasty, ruler of the Free Colonies and the Beta System, son of warriors, builder of bridges and whose armies had added not one but two planets into the Colonies) did not want a bath. He never wanted a bath, but tonight he was finicky about the temperature, the bubbles, the soap, the toys, or lack thereof. 

“You must bathe, your majesty,” said Apolline in her low voice, ever patient. How did she do it? Liadain was almost jealous, but it was in her wiring, in her code, hardwired to placate even the most bratty of child kings.

Aure flung himself backwards, landing dramatically in the android’s waiting arms. “But why?” he whined.

Liadain paused, her writing tablet loading in the background. “Because even the king gets smelly.”

“I do not!” he protested. 

She shrugged. “You’re human. We all get smelly sometimes, but luckily the gods invented baths.”

Aure’s face lit up. “If I was an android, I wouldn’t have to bathe?” He looked to Apolline for confirmation. 

There was something akin to amusements on the half-robot’s face, something indiscernible. Lia made a mental note to investigate further.

For now, the android huffed in a mockery of laughter. “Perhaps, young one, but even androids have cleaning rituals.”

“All those wires,” Lia snickered, mostly for Apolline’s benefit. The android couldn’t blush, but she would have, Lia was certain.

Aure looked up at them, his face red and angry. He was only a little scrap of a thing, pudgy about the face, three and a half feet of rage and spiky red hair, freckles on his cheeks, his knees all scraped and dirty. He had been through a lot these past few weeks, they all had, but it seemed to hit the boy all the harder. 

He could not understand why they had left their home, why they were running, and from whom. He might have been a king but he was still a baby, really, still so young, so nervy and righteously furious. His fury just happened to come out at bathtime.

“You’ll get in the bath,” Liadain warned her son, “Or there’ll be no bedtime story.”

“I don’t want a story,” he snapped. “I want to go home.” As he said it his eyes filled, and he seemed to get braver. “I want my old rooms, my own bed. I want my toys. I want to go home!” 

He slapped the water, sending a wave of it careening out the tub. “I demand it,” he said, for emphasis, and Lia regretted ever teaching him those words. They seemed ill-fitting for his six-year-old mouth.

He might have been the king, but she was still queen, and his mother to boot. She put down her tablet with a great sigh, crossed into the bathroom from her seating place beside the window, grabbed her naked son under the armpits and hoisted him into the tub, with all the grace and glory of a sack of potatoes. He thrashed like a rabbit in a trap, and water got everywhere.

Apolline pounced, grabbing the washcloth and starting with the face. The king spluttered, helpless, and splashed her back in retaliation. Lia felt a wave of sickening panic, before she remembered the android was water resistant. They couldn’t afford to lose any more loyal knights.

For all the troubles, Aure splashed happily in the water. He was a simple child, Lia was coming to learn. As Queen she had spent little time with her youngest son, instead concentrating her efforts on her firstborn. When the rebellion struck, it struck  _ hard _ , and Lia had lost her husband and her daughter in one fell swoop. Now as regent, in exile no less, she was Aure’s everything.

He looked to her now, those big brown eyes melting her in the middle. “Mama,” he asked, quietly, timidly. “Are we going home soon?”

How to explain to this boy with his bruised knees and perennial black curls? How to explain the workings of politics, the crimes of heretics; that the monarchy was overthrown, their palace burned to ruins?

“Soon, precious,” she offered, and this was good enough for him. He returned to his bath, happy to let Apolline scrub those lush curls of his. He smiled up at her, the brown eyes meeting the blue, and she smiled back, a reflex programmed into her by kind makers once upon a time.

“You’re lucky we’re even getting baths,” Lia told him. “Most ships only have showers, or worse--steam sterilisers.” Here he grimaced, and the three of them laughed, passing smiles back and forth.

Lia leaned back into her seat, readjusting her tablet on her knee. She thanked the gods for it, was grateful that she had been of sound mind enough to grab it before they fled. She scrolled through the news, dismissing a dozen biased tabloids, seeing what was trending.

“Rebels have left the city,” she huffed. The gall of them, to invade and strip the place bare, then leave it on a whim. “The citizens have been rounded up. Transported across the border to Tameraine,” she read.

Apolline cocked her head. “All citizens?”

She meant the androids too, and Lia nodded. “All. They’re being put to work in the platinum mines as reparations, which is the thinnest veiled excuse for mass slavery I’ve ever seen.”

Apolline nodded; her people had begun their life as glorified slaves--it had taken years, and toil, to get to where they were now. Their position as warriors, as members of the upper class, was tenuous at best, but now they were as helpless as the humans. Before, they had been Knights; now, they were refugees.

Aure splashed again, sending a tide of water gushing down onto the tiles below. Apolline and Lia tutted in unison.

Apolline was late to bed.

“It’s a good thing you don’t need sleep,” Lia remarked. 

“I was just watching the NewsCast. I can barely keep my eyes off it.”

“I know the feeling,” Lia whispered, so as not to wake Aure, who was asleep between them.

Apolline laid down beside him, careful not to jostle the sleeping monarch. She arranged her limbs awkwardly, with all the precision of a cyborg on low charge. She wore thin clothes, and Lia could see the pulse and rhythm of her HeartChip in her chest. It was blue and beautiful, the only light in their hotel room.

“We’ll be out of here tomorrow,” Lia said softly. “We’ll pay off some smuggler to get us off this planet. We can melt down Aure’s crown if needs be.” They didn’t have much in the way of currency--what little they’d managed to grab in their escape had dwindled to a handful of copper credits.

Apolline sighed, an unnecessary thing, an affectation. It was an odd choice, and Lia frowned. 

“What is a king without a crown?” Apolline said. It sounded like she was quoting someone, but the intelligence was lost on Lia, who was too tired to respond in kind.

“Safe,” she eventually said.

Apolline nodded. She shuffled a little, and pulled the covers over her body. She laid back on the pillow and turned towards Lia. There, behind her ear, Lia could see the tattoo that marked her out as a King’s Knight, his champion, his personal protector. Apolline had gone above and beyond these last few days.

“He’s lucky to have you,” Lia remarked. “We both are.” She reached up to touch Apolline’s soft cheek, and she felt the wires beneath, thicker than veins, and colder. Apolline turned her face and kissed the palm of Lia’s hand, once, twice, a third time. Lia closed her eyes and listened to the ticking of Apolline’s circulatory system. It was a comforting sound, a lullaby. It reminded her somewhat of a song her mother used to sing, and that in turn reminded her of singing it to her own daughter. The grief hit her like a speeding ship, there in the crux of her chest.

“We can’t let anything happen to Aure,” Lia said, and hoped Apolline understood how important this was to her. “Forget the monarchy, forget the line of succession. Fuck the senators, fuck them and their sick plans to use him as a puppet. He’s just a boy,  _ my _ boy, my last child. We keep him safe; the rest is secondary.”

“I agree,” the Knight replied. “I am sworn to him--to our rightful ruler. I was sworn to your daughter before him, and your husband before  _ her. _ I failed them both. I will not fail Aure.”

“You didn’t fail them…” but it was all blurring together in her frantic mind, so that she could no longer be certain what had truly happened. It had all been such a mess. There was a lot of shouting, and panicking, and the sight of her husband’s assassin was burned into the back of her mind. He wore the rebel insignia on his helmet, ready for war, and a sick grin of triumph on his pasty face.

In the here and now, Apolline took her hand, stiff robotic fingers twining around her own. They were cold, like the rest of her.

“We’ll be okay,” she said, and Lia wondered whether they had programmed her to lie.

She couldn’t afford the luxury of hope, not yet, not when she could still hear her husband’s shocked intake of breath as the spear pierced his ribcage. Not when Aure lay so vulnerable between them. 

She closed her eyes and fell asleep to the uneasy sound of Apolline’s HeartChip going  _ thrum-thrum _ in the dark night.


End file.
